No to Population Growth

Jan. 23, 2017

To the Editor:

Ruchir Sharma (“Why Trump Can’t Make It 1981 Again,” Sunday Review, Jan. 15) blames slow population growth for undermining the economy “by delivering fewer young people into the work force.” This narrow view implies that America and the world would be a wealthier and presumably healthier place if we returned to the breakneck rates of population growth that characterized earlier decades.

Stoking the global economy by jacking up population is a recipe for environmental disaster and widespread human suffering. Even at the “slower” growth rates that we’re now experiencing, the world’s population is expected to reach 11.2 billion by 2100, up from 7.5 billion today. During the same period, our numbers here in America are predicted to rise to 450 million from 324 million.

With the growth of a global middle class, or “consuming class,” humanity’s carbon footprint is destined to expand well beyond what sheer population trends suggest. Asphyxiating air pollution already plagues megacities across Asia; water crises threaten security in already tempestuous parts of Africa and the Middle East.

Adding billions of people to a warming world will only place solutions to these problems further beyond our reach.

PHILIP WARBURG

Newton, Mass.

The writer is a nonresident senior fellow at the Institute for Sustainable Energy at Boston University.